[derefr]

> If they take this to court, the court will award the original USD price. They bought an asset worth $x. They are owed $x.

That's not true at all, outside of very specific asset-classes.

A better analogy: let's say we make a trade where I pay you in land, and you don't give me what I'm owed in that trade. I would expect my land back, not its dollar-value.

We do things this way, in the case of land, precisely because my land might turn out to e.g. have gold under it that might make it worth 100x more. If you conned me out of the land, and then found the gold, guess what? That's rightfully my gold.

Refunds aren't legally equivalent to suing for damages. If someone doesn't give you a refund for breaking a contract where you transferred an asset to them, your legal fallback isn't suing for damages; it's suing to get a court-order to execute a seizure in order to reclaim your property, or the things it has in turn been traded for by the contract-breaker. (You know, like repo companies do when you buy stuff on a credit card and then let it go to collections!)

[pbiggar]

Can you explain how you chose land as the equivalent asset class? That doesn't even seem close to the ETH situation.

[rargulati]

For federal tax purposes, virtual currency is treated as property: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-14-21.pdf

[mdorazio]

You seem to be misinterpreting what the IRS means by "property". It is equivalent to "asset", not to "land". It can mean land, but can also mean a stock, bond, capital good, etc. that you own. See [1] for example usage.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc703